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The Natural Products Expo East 2014 - Heru-Ka Anu

The Natural Products Expo East (NPEE) has to be one of the greatest shows on earth. I attended two of the four day event and was completely overwhelmed with the overall presentation -the workshops, lecture presentations, product sampling and demonstrations.

The atmosphere was filled with a wonderful buzzing of exhibitors busying themselves greeting, making presentations, networking, and conducting sales. It was a most beautiful business experience to witness. The sheer number of exhibitors gathered under one roof was not unlike visiting a small town.

The expo occupied the entire Baltimore Convention Center with activities on each of the four levels. Attending all four days of the event may have provided enough time for one to get a good overall sampling, however, the two days I attended was not enough. Though thoroughly impressed with all that I took in, I desired that the event lasted a few days longer so that I might experience more.

Those in the know recognized that the NPEE was the networking and business event of the season. It was an opportunity to be seen and heard, an opportunity to take ones product and or service from obscurity to popularity. It was the place for distributors and wholesalers to get their products to the retailers; the place to create new customers and end users.

By all accounts growth in the natural products industry is up significantly. According the Nutrition Business Journal:

• Every channel — network marketing, internet, practitioner — grew in 2013, with a combined growth of 7.8%.
• Internet nutrition sales grew 21.1% with nearly all the channels finding traction online.
• Practitioner channels showed robust growth of 10% with companies finding traction with MDs looking to boost income and take advantage of complimentary care components in the Affordable Care Act. Nurse practitioners showed growth of 14%.
• MLM sales grew by 5.3% in the US with much of the focus moving offshore. Observers also cite a more modest version of the emerging personalized medicine field as an opportunity well-suited to MLM with more distributors receiving training as health and fitness "coaches."
(source: http://www.penton.com/nutrition-business-journal-announces-2014-direct-consumer-selling-natural-products-industry-report/)

According to the NPEE’s own report the event brought together "More than 23,000 attendees and 1,277 exhibitors [to] the Baltimore Convention Center..."
Growth trends indicate the industry is "poised to grow to $226 billion by 2018 with an annual growth rate of 8.6 percent." (Source: http://www.expoeast.com/expoeast2014/Public/Content.aspx?ID=1059898)

One can only imagine the boon to the ‘natural products economy’ in Baltimore City and surrounding counties, and the Mid-Atlantic area in general. Indicators suggest we should see new products, business growth — including new businesses - occurring over the course of the year.

BmoreNatural.Com will spotlight the impact of the Natural Products Expo East in this area over the next few months leading up to the Natural Products Expo East 2015